Hacker News: mac01021

New comment by mac01021 in "There’s no planet B"

mac01021 — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 16:06:16 +0000

The GP was just setting a lower bound of 1B to establish a basis for calculating the cost to move humanity offworld. The cost for 5B people or 7B people would be even more cost prohibitive.

But also the shrinkage would not have to happen abruptly. In theory you might be able to get to a population of 1B over the course of 200 years without the kind of catastrophic meltdown you're describing.

New comment by mac01021 in "'Terminator' 1 and 2 Save Their Reveals for the Right Time"

mac01021 — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 03:30:53 +0000

If you liked the first one you'll probably like the second one too.

It sounds like the GP probably hadn't seen an avatar movie before?

New comment by mac01021 in "Will we know alien life when we see it?"

mac01021 — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 00:31:38 +0000

So then they'd have formed on earth - no panspermia required?

New comment by mac01021 in "The insane biology of the dragonfly (2021) [video]"

mac01021 — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 22:07:07 +0000

The wings on the thopters described in the novel by Frank Herbert were more bird-like than insect-like.

I don't know which type, if either, will be more practical to build as materials technology improves.

Economics for the future – Beyond thes uperorganism (2020) [pdf]

mac01021 — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 01:44:28 +0000

Article URL: https://www.energyandourfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/1-s2.0-S0921800919310067-main.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34213247

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Shale Gas CEO Says Fracking Has Been 'A Disaster' for Drillers, Investors (2019)

mac01021 — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 15:15:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.desmog.com/2019/06/23/former-shale-gas-ceo-says-shale-revolution-has-been-disaster-drillers-investors/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34185743

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by mac01021 in "Brain circuit that converts spatial goals to escape actions discovered in mice"

mac01021 — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 12:48:04 +0000

Is training with dropout still a thing? Does that mess this up?

New comment by mac01021 in "Gattaca draft script (1997)"

mac01021 — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 12:37:12 +0000

I think it's at least strongly implied in the movie that he has to work much harder than (for example) his genetically superior brother to achieve the same level of performance. So maybe you're both right.

New comment by mac01021 in "Green hydrogen is the centerpiece of Australia’s clean-economy growth plan"

mac01021 — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 12:32:10 +0000

I think you're both right. Introducing H2 as a fuel only helps matters if the energy used to produce the H2 is not from fossil fuels, and probably hurts otherwise.

Right now the world produces a small fraction of its electricity cleanly and the rest using fossil fuels. If you want to divert some of that human energy consumption from heating/cooling/cooking/lighting/computing to H2 production then how do you make sure the diverted energy is from clean sources and that those consumers don't take it upon themselves to fill the new hole in their lives with additional fossil consumption?

If you're going to say we should create petawatt-hours-per-year of additional electricity generation capacity in order to do this, that sounds great but the infrastructure doesn't exist and it will take decades-to-centuries to build it.

So, I'm very much in favor of developing and maintaining the technological expertise required to use H2 for energy. I'm not nearly as convinced when it comes to trying to deploy it at scale in the 2020s.

New comment by mac01021 in "Green hydrogen is the centerpiece of Australia’s clean-economy growth plan"

mac01021 — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 11:38:42 +0000

I don't know what this LOHC stuff really is, but it's easy to imagine that dissolving H2 in in an existing liquid would be much less of an undertaking than inducing it to become C8H18 or whatever.

New comment by mac01021 in "In defense of linked lists"

mac01021 — Sat, 05 Nov 2022 00:35:32 +0000

OS kernels tend to use them simply because they don't have malloc at their disposal and so it's most practical to stick to fixed size memory chunks, right?

New comment by mac01021 in "Earth Overshoot Day"

mac01021 — Tue, 17 May 2022 14:55:19 +0000

I'm glad you linked to that article, which I had not seen before.

I think I agree with the author about degrowth as a goal being a political nonstarter. But I'm pretty skeptical about the notion that future growth can consist of ever increasing amounts of "dematerialized" goods and services without ceasing to be real, meaningful growth (however it might be defined).

I also think the political and physical challenges inherent in technological or "pro-growth" (I need a better word) solutions for getting out of overshoot are widely underappreciated. This [1] article runs some numbers to show that, for our global civilization to satisfy its current level of energy consumption without emitting significant amounts of greenhouse gases in 2050, we will have to bring online clean energy generation capacity equivalent to one nuclear power station every day between now and then. Given that, I'd be extremely surprised to see us get there by 2150, or maybe at all.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/09/30/net-zero...

New comment by mac01021 in "I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears"

mac01021 — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 11:40:46 +0000

Are you sure it's not just that their hair and fashion styles are those of a previous decade and that that triggers the "this person is old" neurons in your brain?

New comment by mac01021 in "I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears"

mac01021 — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 04:34:23 +0000

> How so?

Modern industrial farming practices, designed to optimize agricultural output per unit of labor, are an ecological and environmental travesty. They require the widespread use of pesticides and toxic fertilizers that are decimating the biosphere. Monocropping unsustainably degrades soil quality. And the large contiguous areas used for industrial agricultural operations are extremely disruptive to wildlife.

The most obvious solution to the above is an agricultural system with many more, much smaller farms, where human beings do the work currently done by machines and chemicals.

New comment by mac01021 in "Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA""

mac01021 — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 13:19:51 +0000

> Produce is labelled not just down to a country level, but to individual farms, and often you'll see meat for sale in shops include not just the code for the farm, but the full name too.

Is this true across all of Europe? If not, what country are you in?

New comment by mac01021 in "Ask HN: Is software engineering heading towards obsoletion?"

mac01021 — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 13:12:35 +0000

> programming work in the next decade will be done by logicians using something like TLA+

How is that not software engineering?

New comment by mac01021 in "First images from James Webb telescope exceed expectations"

mac01021 — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 12:59:37 +0000

That assumes we're the object of the simulation rather than a byproduct. Maybe what they want to simulate is a universe and we've just happened to pop up in a small part of the simulation.

New comment by mac01021 in "The Sixth Mass Extinction: fact, fiction or speculation?"

mac01021 — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 06:44:06 +0000

I assume they meant rewilding.

New comment by mac01021 in "America’s Top Environmental Groups Have Lost the Plot on Climate Change"

mac01021 — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 15:35:14 +0000

It's not the only important thing harming the biosphere and GHG emissions are not the only unsustainable human practice. But we are talking here about global warming specifically and that is driven by net GHG emissions.

New comment by mac01021 in "America’s Top Environmental Groups Have Lost the Plot on Climate Change"

mac01021 — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 06:12:03 +0000

If we mitigate climate change, it will be through carbon pricing. So I support that. Mostly by giving time and money to [https://citizensclimatelobby.org/], as I think their laser focus on passing a Carbon Fee & Dividend is clearly the best plan.